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Accused Rogue Admin Terry Childs Makes His Case
angry tapir writes "He's been in jail for seven months now, but former San Francisco network administrator Terry Childs says he's going to keep fighting to prove he's innocent of computer crime charges. Childs was arrested on July 12, charged with disrupting the City of San Francisco's Wide Area Network during a tense standoff with management. Infoworld has also conducted an interview with Childs."
Is this another 'Won't somebody think of the Childs?' story?
Thanks for just blowing away presumption of innocence, Taco :-/
[FUCK BETA]
I almost got frist psot but Terry changed my WPA key. ):
THL phish sticks
"He's been in jail for seven months now,...
I love our entire "Innocent until proven guilty" thing. Unless you are on the wrong side of the celebrity wagon. I bet Paris would be out by now...
What does the CQ stand for?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I know I don't RTFA often enough but did the "interview" strike anyone as a bit thin? I'm more use to the format of question and answer and I got ten paragraphs that had a glorious 7 sentences of actual quotes from the subject of the interview. None of which touches on what he did, why he did it and only the faintest hint and why he feels that he's not guilty.
Looking at it I get the feeling that the reason I don't bother with the articles as much anymore is because web journalism is simply too lite in all the wrong places.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
You have really weird fantasies. Have you ever thought about going to a psychiatrist instead of posting to slashdot?
Staying with Mac then?
This article gives better reasons for those modems being on the network than previous stories. Doesn't seem so rogue now, does it?
You know I was arguing all about either torture the guy and let him walk to get the passwords, thinking that 10 minutes of waterboarding is less damaging than 7 years in prison.
Now, his side says that he's getting tossed into jail for sneaking a few modems onto his desk and not giving out the passwords to the modems he set up? come on now, that's not the story we heard coming from s.f. before and I have to wonder just what passwords s.f. was asking for.
I don't know that I would hire the guy, but, somehow, when all the banks in the fine city of san francisco are sitting there having blown through trillions of dollars, I think maybe s.f. pd needs to be putting some other people in prison besides this guy.
This is my sig.
That there's a network admin somewhere that has giant ethical nuts. As anyone with even a day's worth of network admin/engineering experience knows, the loyalty of all network admins can be purchased with A. a fat paycheck or B. a threat of any kind from someone with authority.
Can you imagine even half of the network admins in the united states changing the passwords on their routers and shutting them down until Childs is released?
Yeah, I can't either.
Not going to comment on Child's innocence or guilt, but I have to wonder whether his lawyer is giving him good advice. I mean, giving an interview to the press which you discuss some case specifics doesn't seem like a very wise thing to do. Even though TFA was just a summary of the interview and did not contain a transcript of it, I'm guessing that the San Francisco prosecutor could subpoena the reporter to turn over a transcript, or recordings and any notes the reporter took to use against Childs.
Giving an interview to the press really screwed over UK hacker Gary McKinnon, who's currently fighting an extradition order to be brought to the US to face charges breaking in to Pentagon computers. His interview by the BBC shortly after he was arrested basically was a full confession of everything he had done and left no wiggle room to create a case for reasonable doubt. The US prosecutor could base his case just on the BBC article alone and probably get a conviction. Of, McKinnon gave the interview before the US filed charges, I think, so he may have thought he was in the clear when the British authorities didn't file their own charges.
Anyway, it just not a smart idea to give interviews to the press while facing criminal charges, and I'm surprised his lawyer let him do it.
he's going to keep fighting to prove he's innocent of computer crime charges.
Well, good luck with that...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I hate to say it, but these stories only reinforce for me that Childs is likely guilty.
It seems even clearer that he really did keep passwords to himself, and when asked, refused to hand them over to his management.
Management can ask for them (how can they ever replace a network admin, otherwise?) and they can ask you to hand them over to anyone they say. As Schneier says, they belong to your employer, not you.
These articles imply that it's not "good practice" to give passwords out. If that's really his defense, it's specious and deceptive. If your boss demands a password, you have to give it, by law. If he demands you give it to another person, or 20 other people, you have to give it, by law.
If they do something stupid with it, then maybe _they_ end up in jail. If you want, you can even try catching them at it, being a whistle-blower, help them along with that process. But that's _not_ your problem, as an admin.
I just get the sense of a tense guy who had a personality conflict with his boss (who may have been an ass, or not), and who let his emotions carry him over into criminal conduct. At the most, there are some mistakes in ancillary parts of the charges against him (re. modems), which is unimportant to the main issue.
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Of course, smaller dicks.
If he's a Mac user, then all I can say is... ...That's no butt plug...
I hate printers.
Editors,
Could you at least read the first two paragraphs of the links in the submission, instead of posting plagiarized text? I mean, it only takes a couple of seconds to follow the first link and read a two sentences.
If things went down like Childs said, then he was indeed doing his job correctly. I've got root level access to all our Linux servers and several of our AD domains due to the work I do. However, I'm not the network admin. I would not give any of the passwords to anyone (including my boss, the head of IT), and instead would direct the requester to our head network/infrastructure guy.
I happen to know that he would refuse to just give out root passwords to management just because they wanted it. The only people with that level of access are those who need it for their work. This is how things SHOULD BE.
Now if Childs was the only one with the passwords (which from the standoff, I guess he was), then he may be guilty of forgetting that you NEVER put all your eggs in one basket. Were I in Childs' position, I would have been concerned what would happen to my network should I get hit by a bus. However, I can't believe he wouldn't have a PFY to share the info with. You always gotta have a second.
The Digital Sorceress
I get the impression that his defense is not going to be "I didn't do it" but "I did it, but it's not a crime"
Personally I think he's holding out for the fat paycheck at the end of the inevitable lawsuit, and good for him. This whole thing is about the city of SF trying to save face.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
It seems to me the whole thing is really about a power struggle with a recalcitrant employee. Someone with a lot of authority in City Government sicked Johnny Law after this guy when he refused to give out the admin passwords. The city then calls up the media, lets out the dogs, scarlet letter, the whole 9 yards.
In reality, is failing to reveal an admin password a criminal offense? Have we really gotten so strange in this day and age that some passwords are now considered "property"?
I have no problem with him being fired. He sounds like a control freak who took the whole system to be his personal baby. But the charges against him sound more like someone is pissed off, and trying to take it out through the court system.
AccountKiller
Can you please cite the CA law which requires such action?
Does anyone have a link to the original story? I remember it was on Slashdot before, but TFS mentions this issue as if everyone would have the previous story bookmarked...
Does anyone find it curious that the city managers claim they couldn't get access to the system without Childs passwords. I mean how difficult is it technically to reset a password, especially with physical access to the system. And with most reported 'news' nowadays, the facts keep changing with each new itteration:
.."
.."
.."
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.Security Director J. Pieralde .. highly suggests that Childs still had current system admin rights .."
.."
Sep 10 2008 "The SF rogue admin Terry Childs installed a 'terminal server,' which appears to be a router, on the city's network, but investigators haven't been able to find or log into it"
"Childs has become increasingly hostile at work and defiant toward certain managers and has failed to comply with standard work procedure, as described above by the only system administrator situation"
"On the late afternoon of Friday 6-20-08, Security Manager J. Pieralde was conducting an audit inventory of equipment at the OMP Data Center. As she proceeded with her work, she was confronted by Childs and Childs began taking pictures of her, using his SF Owned cell phone. Pieralde became so concerned for her personal safety that she locked herself in a room and contacted Director R. Robinson by cell phone, informing him of (S) Childs' behavior
"Over the last months, Childs has refused and not authorized or allowed any other system administrators to the FiberWAN
"
"
"The Labor Relations representative, Mr. Leung, then informed Childs that because of his insubordination and his failure to answer questions by a superior of his insubordination and his failure to answer questions by a superior he was being suspended from his employment
" Childs' City owned work cell phone, pager, ID cards, and access cards were taken from him
"Approximatly, an hour later, a page was received on the pager and a check of messages revealed a message from one of the routers .
"Mr. Maupin was also able to determine that Mr' Childs had, in fact, intentionally configured multiple Cicso network devices with a command that erases all configuration date in the event that someone tries to restore administrative access or tries to perform disaster recovery. This command was created for military applications that require deployment of network devices in areas that may have the possibility of hostile forces that could get physical access to network devices
Does anyone else apart from me think this is technologically nonsense
It seems like he was one of the only people there who had a clue about how to run the network and he did not what to let the other people in the city mess up the network and have to work a lot of over time to fix it.
The thing was they where cutting back on people and he was the only one there who had any idea on how things where set up and the other people can make a big mess be messing with the network and they where the same people who installed viruses on a sever. And Terry Childs tried to set some security policy's and they did not seem to look at them.
He also set the network stuff to do a full reset if some tried to do the easy password reset on them or set them to trun off the easy reset forcing you to do a full reset to get back in to them a common high security setting that is used on some networks.
He has an imagination, something you obviously don't have.
Anyway, he's obviously lying. If that were true then Mac users would flock to Linux in droves.
"On Friday, June 20, there was an altercation between Childs and Jeana Pieralde, the new DTIS security manager at the 1 Market Street datacenter in San Francisco. Until her promotion, she had been a city network engineer who worked with Childs"
.45 caliber bullets, but apparently no weapons"
Why didn't anyone tell Childs of this promotion, and who got her the 'promotion'?
"Childs disputed this interpretation of events, claiming in court documents that Pieralde was conducting clandestine searches of DTIS employee workspaces and had removed a hard drive from an office when he confronted her. He also denied taking photos of Pieralde"
Were there or were there not photographs taken of Pieralde by Childs. Was Pieralde authorized to conduct such audits and where now is this 'SF Owned cell phone', and what exactly did Childs intend to do with these photographs.
"the city stated that Childs was placed under surveillance and was arrested on the evening of July 12 as he was parking his vehicle near his home in the suburb of Pittsburg. At the time of his arrest, he was found to have $10,000 cash on his person and receipts showing that he had traveled to Sparks, Nevada, where he had looked at renting storage units. Following his arrest, police searched his house and workspaces. Police turned up 9mm and
Like, if he was under surveillance (and his cell/pager conficated), wouldn't they have noticed that he wasn't actually near a computer whern the pager went off ?
"Considering that normal bail for a murder case is $1 million -- one fifth of what Childs' bail was set at -- this filing was unexpected"
-------
"it is a mystery what exactly Jeana Pieralde was doing performing an unannounced, after-hours "security audit" in a City office other than that in which she herself worked. It was during that secret "security audit" on the evening of Friday, June 20th, 2008, in which Jeana Pieralde took a hard drive from another City employee's office and was photographed by Terry Childs as she did so"
"The office from which Pieralde removed the hard drive belonged to DTIS Security Officer Nancy Hastings (who naturally was not present in the office because the "security audit" was being conducted after hours.)" "Terry Childs had returned late to the offices (which do include his office and do not include Jeana Pieralde's office) at about 5:15 P.M. to find Jeana Pieralde (who does not work in those offices) taking a hard drive from one of Terry's co-workers offices. Terry photographed this act with the camera in his cellphone"
Did Pieralde really remove a harddrive. What was the name of this co-worker, where is this harddrive now. What motovated Pieralde to remove the harddrive. What's really going on here. Was Pieralde caught with her-in-th-cookie-jar, and someone decide to frame Childs to distract from something?
Make a National IT Walkout day.
#1 Change the root or administrative password and don't give it to any managers.
#2 Change the PIN number to enter the server room and don't give it to any managers.
#3 Shut down all servers in the server room before going home.
#4 Turn off all cell phones and pagers, and put your home phones off the hook.
#5 Let management go one day without an IT department and see what happens.
That'll teach them to nail innocent admins for things managers with admin or root access have done.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
No one bothers to tell Childs that former co-worker, Jeana Pieralde gets promoted to Chief Information Security Officer, despite no role actually existing up to then. She then sneeks back in after hours and is caught remoiving a harddrive. Childs photographs her and next think in in the clink on $5,000,000 bail. If was only retrospectively that the City realized that this 'rogue' administrator had been recalcitrant "Over the last months" ..
Infoworld has also conducted an interview with Childs
Shouldn't that be "children"?
He is certainly book smart but many many technically inclined street smart people will not touch such jobs with a ten foot pole specifically for reasons like this.
What law says "you must hand out a password to your boss when he requests it or you will be prosecuted as a felon"?
The lawyer in the referenced articles has stated "The response to suspend him was arguably legal. The response to prosecute him is not." That means, if you don't give up a password, you can be suspended or fired, as you could be in any job, but that doesn't mean you can be prosecuted. If you use those passwords for nefarious means after you are fired, then yes you can, but so far the articles don't point to anything Child's did. There have been some wild claims, but InfoWorld has a special report page with articles that seem to call into question the accusations that are being leveled at Childs.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Courts are. Seems many people on Slashdot misunderstand the whole "Guilty until proven innocent," thing. What that is, is a simple way of stating how burden of proof works in our court system. In US courts, the defense isn't required to prove anything. The defense can present no case at all and the defendant can still go free. The reason is they have no burden. The burden of proof is on the state, the prosecution. They have to prove that the defendant is guilty. So they can't just walk in and say "We accuse the defendant of doing X," and leave it at that. They have to present evidence to prove their case. Thus by design a defendant in court is presumed innocent. Proof of guilt must be offered because a not guilty verdict the the default in absence of proof.
That's all it means. It is just a simple way of summing up our court system. It is NOT a command to the population at large. Individuals are free to believe what they wish, and use whatever standard for evidence they wish. People aren't required to view everyone as innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. They are welcome o hold opinions as they see fit.
So please, but the crap with this. If you think the guy is innocent, or wish to reserve judgment until later, that's wonderful. If others don't, that's also fine.
People always need to remember you don't own the stuff at work, the company does. Thus it isn't up to you to decide what goes on with it, it is the company's. That means if they wish to make a bad decision, they can. If the owner decides that the root password should be "password" and further that it should be posted on the wall, well that's his decision. You can and should tell him why that's a bad idea but if he says "I don't care, do it," then it over. You can't tell him no, because it isn't your stuff, it's his stuff. You can, of course, quit (and I probably would in that situation), but you can't just refuse and say "It's for your own good."
Now in the scheme of a large company where you don't deal directly with the owner, it is still the same thing. Whoever their designated representative is, makes the decisions. So if you are given a stupid order you tell your boss it's a bad idea. He says do it anyways you go up to whatever level is appropriate (IT supervisor maybe, CEO maybe) and make your concerns known, but you do your job. If they want to be dumb, they can be dumb. Not your place to tell them they can't, and indeed it can be illegal.
It also stems from the fact that we don't lock up innocent people in the western world.
Thanks. I just sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. Let me try this in a dialect you might understand.
Son, not only do we lock up innocent people here in the US but, Hell, in Texas we've condemned men to die when their defense attorney didn't even show up in one case, or showed up too drunk to stand straight in another. Up there in Yankeeland, they just caught a judge getting commissions from the prison for sending kids to jail.
Pound for pound, we lock up more people than the Russkies and the Chicoms COMBINED ever did. What, you think they're all guilty? You think Americans are just that much more sinful than all them godless heathens combined?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Suppose you hire me to secure your valuables for you. You have a locked storage unit, and it is my job to keep they key and only let you and those you say are ok in. I do a good job keeping the place secure. However, at some point you change your mind. You don't want me to be the sole keeper of the keys. You want to have the keys yourself, and make a few copies for trusted friends. So you tell me "Give me the keys, I need to make a few copies." I tell you "No, it isn't secure for you to have the keys, I'll keep the only set."
This sound ok to you? You ok with me deciding that I get to be the sole arbiter of who gets at your stuff?
Well this is a very similar situation. As a network admin, the computers and networks at the company don't belong to you, they belong to your employer. Thus your employer gets to decide what to do with them. That can include making bad decisions. While you certainly should let them know if they are bad decisions, you don't get to tell them "No you can't do that." You can say "No I'm not going to do that, find someone else," and quit, but you can't simply refuse their request and try to prevent them from doing it. It isn't your stuff, you don't get to make the choice.
I can understand him being in trouble, but to keep him in jail?
He isnt a threat to society. This is why our jails are overcrowded.....
No lawyer worth his salt would advise his client to give an interview like this pretrial. For whatever is motivating him, he probably did it against all legal advise. With that said, I don't believe Childs at all. It just doesn't make much sense, and it seems much more likely he is trying to cover illegal activity.
Free Terry Childs.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I've heard that in some countries, traffic fines are proportional to one's income. I wish we'd institute that system here.
In the U.S., less than five percent of cases go to trial. That means that less than five percent of people ever test the presumption of innocence. Why? Maybe because they're guilty . . .
A little research will uncover the answer. Say the police break down your door one early morning, shoot your dog, and cuff you and your family. They have an informant that says you're involved in the meth trade. They take it to the DA, who can see it's bullshit, but DA's are measured in pleas and convictions, so he offers you a plea. You can cop to some minor class-D felony and three months in county. Or you can take it to court and put yourself at the mercy of 12 random citizens and/or a judge. Win or lose, you're out your job, your house, quite possibly your spouse, and your life savings. (Not to mention other details not suitable for this family publication.)
If you've got any sense at all, you take the plea. Why? Maybe "because you're guilty...".
That's how the presumption of innocence really works.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
If I could C TFA...
What, you think they're all guilty? You think Americans are just that much more sinful?
Yes, Americans ARE more guilty. That's due, of course, to having enough laws on the books to guarantee you are always guilty of SOME crime. How many laws do we have? Just enough so you can reasonably be charged AT ANY TIME.
... they are just stupid morons, as they certainly have _exactly_ the same amount of information as I have: a few news articles. Hardly enough to form an opinion. As I said. Stupid morons.
...against plea-bargaining.
In the U.S., less than five percent of cases go to trial. That means that less than five percent of people ever test the presumption of innocence. Why? Maybe because they're guilty . . .
Amazing. You just asserted that presumption of innocence is a reality, and in the same breath insinuated all people who go to trial are guilty. If Einstein was right, and genius is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, then your mental acuity is astonishing indeed.
The whole point of plea bargaining is to reduce the number of cases that go to trial. Plea bargaining works because you can't predict the jury's decision with certainty. If you look at the possible outcomes of plea-bargaining, it guarantees innocent men will end up in prison.
Suppose you're innocent. Suppose you're innocent, but unlucky, and the circumstances make you look guilty. Suppose you're an unpopular minority. Suppose you pray to the wrong god. Suppose you're just ugly. Suppose you just look like "that type." Suppose you don't come from around here. Suppose you've never caught a break in your life. Suppose there are any one of a million reasons why twelve random people off the street could drop you in a hole without any good reason and not lose any sleep over it.
Suppose you have children. Suppose you have family who depend on you. Suppose The Authorities come to you and tell you, "Boy, you don't push us on this, and we'll let you out in a couple of years. But if you make us go all the way, we'll make sure you don't ever see the light of day again, and when we put you in jail, we'll make sure Bubba is waiting for you with a dress."
Take a random sample of a thousand innocent men, and sure, some of those men will have the moral courage and fortitude to tell you to go to Hell and take me to trial. Some of those men will lack that courage, and take your bargain out of fear. Most of those men will run a quick and dirty risk/reward calculation in their head, and realize that the best option is to take the deal -- because that's how you arranged it.
Plea bargaining is a foul and filthy practice that guarantees a miscarriage of Justice in a certain percentage of cases. That's why not every Western nation allows it.
But your arguments have nothing to do with the facts -- they have to do with your fears. It's terrifying to live in a world where innocent men can routinely go to prison. It's terrifying to live in a world where going to prison means a good chance of rape and brutality. It's terrifying to live in a world where the authorities actually use that threat of rape against you without conscience. It's terrifying to live in a world where any random mouth-breathing high-school-droput with a badge can destroy your life with trumped-up evidence. It's terrifying to live in a world where you can hear cops threaten to club children, where you hear cops threaten to plant fake drug evidence against teenagers, where you see cops shoot prone and begging men in the back...
It's terrifying to live in a world where simply browsing YouTube can give you video evidence of all of this.
So, your cognitive dissonance blasts away at full force, and you tell yourself innocent people don't go to jail because anyone who goes to jail is not innocent. You pillow your head on that circular logic, and while you dream you live in a pretty and just world you make it that much harder for the rest of us to fix the problems...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
What I don't understand is why the city needed him to get the passwords? I do "Network Administration" for small businesses and typically they don't have any of the passwords from the last guy who setup their network. In these situations I've found 20minutes with an OphCrack live CD to be sufficient to gain access to windows and single user mode to reset root works for most linux/mac and go from there. I've always been told if someone has physical access to your server then they can get in. The city always had physical access right? Why couldn't they get the passwords? My knowledge of high-end networking is undoubtedly very low, but surely there must be some similar password recovery schemes yes?
And on the router end of things, do the high end cisco routers come with reset switches?
Brandno
...give us our due. We shoot plenty of people, too, and we shoot straighter than them Commies ever did.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
If his managers order him to disclose the passwords, that's what he has to do. It doesn't matter whether it's on national television. But he could have handled it better.
He should have put in writing that he recommended against disclosing the passwords prior to doing so and asked his managers to sign off on it (a receipt, if you will).
Afterwards, he could either have quit, or he could have stayed on and dealt with the security fallout. Quitting probably would have been the more prudent choice.
Altogether, his managers come across as complete idiots, and he comes across as a bad employee. Everybody loses.
This is Childs abuse!
I recently listened to an interview with an ex-spook, one who had been fairly high up. It was his opinion that Madoff is not in jail because he is singing like a canary.
It turns out that a big part of the money invested was through overseas investment firms with 'anonymous' clients - read money launderers. Their clients included tax cheats, drug czars, dictators, 'princes', and other fun folks.
So, Madoff is the link to a bunch of folks the Feds would like to know about. Some of them will be targeted for legal action, others will be used in other ways - the spook suggested that some foreign rulers could be 'encouraged' to abide by US policy - or else their citizens finds out where their stolen money went.
It's also possible that this information could alter the way that whatever money still exists gets distributed.
I have no idea if any of this is true, but it is certainly an interesting prospect.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
MOD PARENT UP (and adapt for future generations!)
You're confused, because the US legal system often uses the word justice in it's many institutions. Why they often have a statue indicating justice being blind, etc.
See, we are talking about a legal system, not really a justice system. Even though it was the original intent of the framers of the Constitution to build a just legal system. It's just simply not in the economic interest of legal professionals to have a justice system. So over the years it has changed into it's current state.
This is fucked that he's been locked up all this time.
I think (as I said back when this happened) that there is a lot more to this story; there were obviously political and interpersonal machinations going on that led to this situation.
I would be tempted to say that he probably should have handed over the admin passwords and walked away, but then I remembered that he did offer to do just this, but only to give them directly to the mayor - but by the time you are being ambushed in a conference room by your boss, some douchebag traitor subordinates and a cop, your future employment at said job is probably already compromised so you might as well get out - but the fact that it went to this level and that he WAS willing to release the password to the mayor AND the fact that he was willing to go to jail over this tells me that there is probably more to this.
I wish I could remember more of what I had heard right after this occurred - because I seem to remember hearing something about him knowing that something shady was going on - that someone was compromising the network or something like that and/or that it had gotten personal and that this non-technical supervisor had it out for him or something...
After everything I read at the time from people who knew this guy and had more information about this than what they've read in articles I had come to the conclusion that something integral to this situation stinks to high hell.
It was apparent that some people found him arrogant, but hey - that isn't a crime and sometimes in this industry as many of us know, if your technical skills are way above the average skill of the people working around you sometimes that does get mistaken as arrogance - because it can be trying fixing fuckups and explaining things all of the time - sure, it would be best if everyone who had technical skills had interpersonal skills to match, but that isn't often the case.
Additionally, I don't see where he even broke the law. The network never went down, he simply refused to hand over passwords to non-technical employees - he didn't "take control of the network illegitimately" and if they wanted to fire him for not complying with management, then yeah - but pressing charges and keeping the guy in jail for 7mos - and then we have a DA that proves his fucking case by entering active logins and passwords into evidence?
Does anyone know where to where to mail Terry Childs? I'd like to send the guy some books or something - it must suck really bad to be in jail....
I don't really disagree with anything you said, but I'm still amazed that this is rated "5, Insightful" when you got the basic phrasing backwards.
It's "Innocent until proven guilty" not "Guilty until proven innocent". It may seem like a minor quibble, but when that phrase is all most people will remember, it's important to get it right.
Yeah, I think I took that totally wrong and missed the satire. I'm so used to people in Dallas saying stuff like that and meaning every word of it, I totally missed it.
Sorry, Inda. I'll try to clean the crap outta my ears.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Obviously, you evil communists just want to punish the most productive members of our society. Productive members like Bernie Madoff and Paris Hilton. If you want to live in a communist country so bad, you can move back to Venezuela, you terrorist-lover!
Jeko,
You are my hero. Did you just come up with that off the top of your head? You should write speeches. There are ConLaw experts who have the same passion but 1% of the skill with rhetoric that you have.
Excellent Post!
synopsis: Rogue sysadmin holds San francisco to ransom, only one man can defeat this maniac. Staring Brad Pitt as Terry Childs and Bruce Willis as James T. Ramsey ..
Why is it if you make off with Billions of dollars like madoff you get home arrest.
But if you lock people out of a computer system and cost them maybe $5-10million you get stuck in jail.
This guys says he is innocent, madoff said he was guilty.
Got to love the american judicial system
This shit needs to be fixed.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
This one. There are others as well.
Defense counsel can and do say anything that comes into their heads that may help their clients. In this case, it's a dubious opinion about sentencing. Go see what Charles Manson's or Bernie Maddoff's defense attorneys suggested about their cases.
Please use "IANAL" or "I am not an attorney" when dispensing bogus legal advice, thanks.
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Don't take my word for it. Ask an attorney.
Or just ask yourself how you ever replace your network or system admins if they don't feel like letting you?
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I finally get fan mail and it's from an AC. :-)
Actually, it's easy. Spend a childhood of Sundays listening to endless variations on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "It's Friday ... but Sunday's Coming" (a classic old Crucifixion/Easter dichotomy) and you could belt out a pretty mean spur-of-the-moment sermon too.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Both you and GP post are assuming that the remaining 95% of cases either result in guilty please or the charges being dropped. You actually need to correlate arrest figures with charges filed/dropped to conclude either way, and neither of you mentions having done so. You can find such records here, I think: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dtdata.htm
Abuses certainly happen, and are terrifying. I recently saw a wrongly convicted man speak; he'd been on death row for 19 years before being freed. His situation was traced to a notorious forensic examiner in Oklahoma. Still, I don't think a general conclusion on either side is appropriate before determining the actual figures.
I certainly don't think that having good faith that at least the criminal justice system is SUPPOSED to keep innocent people out of jail goes as far as cognitive dissonance. If you believe that there should in fact be justice, you certainly stand a better chance of doing something to improve the imperfect, and often horrifying errors of injustice.
I'd like to think his defense is reasonable, but then I thought the same thing about Reiser's case.
What I want to know is where is the EFF with all of this happening? This whole case is insane. The only reason its happening is that it involves a government network and government people that don't know what they are talking about. If it were a corporate network, they would have just fired him if they didn't like how he handled it. Prosecution would only come from real illegal access.
A Rogue Admin is a versatile character, capable of sneaky combat and nimble tricks. The Rogue Admin is stealthy and dextrous, and currently the only official base class from the Player's Handbook capable of finding and disarming many traps and picking locks. The Rogue Admin also has the ability to "sneak attack" ("backstab" in previous editions) enemies who are caught off-guard or taken by surprise, inflicting extra damage.
There's being professional and then there is trying to keep your job by grovelling to clueless neo-fuedalistic masters which appears to be the situation here. In most places you can go sideways or up the tree to get stupidity repealed but if you have a situation where blind loyalty overrides production you are screwed.
"any random mouth-breathing high-school-droput"
You are spreading fear yourself. For what reason? With unfounded crap about _any_ highschool dropout being able to do that you just show your personal bias that has absolutely nothing to do with facts either.